Tattooed
by spanishshipper
Summary: Everything John does is without feeling. He only felt when he was getting tattooed. And now, in this hour of darkness, there is nothing to keep him from this sad life. Post-Reichenbach, imaginary!Sherlock, major character death. Written for an-alaskan-abeille, because I believe her to be an incredible person who deserves to love and be loved. Who I love.


"Just like that. Do you understand me? I want it to be exactly the same. Sprawl that tiny handwriting across my shoulders." The tattoo artist nodded, clearly terrified of Dr. John Watson, sitting there, leaning over the chair and relaxing. At the bite of that needle, the ink burning into his skin, he smiled. Truth be told, he hadn't felt true pain in months. It had been two hundred and twenty days since he had last heard Sherlock's voice. The hot breath of the sweaty man burning ink into his back was humid, a cough every now and then the only noise puncturing the silence.

The tattoo was over before John was ready for it to be. All he had wanted was to feel that needle forever, reminding him that there was something real left in him. The man ran a cool cloth over his reddened skin, and gave John a hand mirror, showing him how to look at the words written messily across his back. John nodded in approval, tears in his eyes as he sighed and looked to the artist. "Thank you. It's wonderful." The man smiled, and explained how to clean it. Here's a bottle, rub it on, if it turns green, go to the hospital. John tuned most of it out. Why did people always forget that he was a goddamn doctor?

The air was nippy, but John walked down the street without a shirt. His nipples were hard. His heart was pounding. His newly inked shoulders were burning and hissing at the same time. By the time he returned to that damn flat, his body was convulsing and objecting to his near-naked state. Mrs. Hudson heard him enter, but they had only spoken of rent since he had… he had gone. Speaking to Mrs. Hudson made John feel, and the only time John liked to feel was right before he went to sleep.

Stumbling up the stairs, John fell into their—his room, whimpering and hiccupping and coughing and generally just feeling pathetic. Stop it, John. Stop it. You're okay. You're alive. You're alright. Lying on the ground, John looked up at the skull painting, that hideous wallpaper, the yellow fucking smilie face punctured with bullet acne. He rolled over, tucking himself into a ball and taking a few deep breaths before stretching and getting up. The kitchen was still a mess, test tubes broken and smashed onto the floor, the hanging mannequin from the living room now haphazardly thrown on top of the fridge. The only thing in place from before was the kettle, the box of nicotine patches that John used to go to bed every night, and a mug. Tea was made. Three patches were placed gingerly in a line from his medial epicondyle of the humerus, tickling up his bicep and making him relax. He never smoked. But the nicotine made him feel good.

The bed hadn't been made since he had disappeared—not that the highly functioning sociopath had much organization save for in his mind palace. Nothing about this was John's—the room wasn't even his. He curled up in Sherlock's bed, wrapping himself into a cocoon of the bizarre man's smell, surrounded by the sheet that had once played as Sherlock's dress in Buckingham Palace. He was naked beneath the sheets, thinking of what that body had looked like, broken on the ground. Broken. Sherlock would have called that body broken, and compared it to a child's toy flung against a wall during a fit. Sherlock was an asshole and John was glad to be rid of him. John shivered and turned over in the bed, emptying the contents of his stomach into the trash pail next to it.

John cried that night, the fourth time that week, everything within him surrendering to the ghost of Sherlock's embrace. The virgin man was beneath a tombstone, and never once had he held him. And so John slept in his bed, this making it the two hundred and twenty first night. His sleeping was not peacefully filled with flashbacks to Afghanistan. It was now filled with the terrifying scrambling of Sherlock's feet as he fell, the blood pooling so beautifully around his head, the consulting detective having met his match with the pavement. John didn't really sleep. He slept for a few moments, and then stood, frantically running his way through the flat, looking for him. He then went back to bed, unable to sleep on his back due to the reddening pain. Twelve hours of this. John got very little sleep now that he was alone. He woke up in the morning, and made tea. He didn't leave. His back hurt and his heart hurt and nothing felt good.

Until the two hundred and twenty first night alone, John thought about Sherlock, had thought of the millions of ways he could have faked that. That night, he wore that deer stalking hat to bed and cried and searched the apartment for clues. An arm was ripped off of the mannequin at three in the morning, and thrown through an open window.

John greeted that window with an odd hug of sorts, realizing that he hadn't left it open. The flat was freezing. John sighed and saw his own breath, and saw his life flash before his eyes. The lights flickered on, and John turned around to see the tall man with the scarf.

Nothing about him had changed, and John could feel his very heart bleed from those cheekbones. His scarf was unraveling slightly, and that was how John knew. Suddenly he knew why Sherlock had jumped and for whom he had jumped. It was for him. Something—someone, Moriarty, had threatened the lives of John, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade. How could John have been so blind before? Lost in his grief, John had lost all of his Sherlockian powers of deduction. Now with this man before him, the wheels were spinning and spinning and John was braced against that window, wondering how many times that man had really fallen out of it.

They just stared at each other, John's deep and frantic breaths the only noise for a long time.

Sherlock spoke.

"You haven't been sleeping. You haven't been working, and the creases just beneath your eyes tell me that a sty is on its way. You've been crying. From the state of the place, you go on rampages every night, destroying things. You've gotten into a ridiculous habit of sleeping with nicotine patches, even though you don't smoke. I was going to just come in, go to sleep, wake up, make some tea, forget that it ever happened. I was just going to assume my life again, happy to be back in 221B Baker Street. But my bed was occupied. And your room is covered in dust so naturally I couldn't sleep there. You were in my bed because you missed me. I don't think anyone has ever missed me. Mycroft went to work the next day, sat in the silence room, and then did his government job. Mrs. Hudson went to the funeral with you, and has been busy cleaning every other flat in 221. But Dr. John Watson did nothing. You have done nothing. You were so utterly taken by the fact that I was gone that you went into a catatonic state of mourning. Why?"

John gaped at him.

And said nothing.

And then three steps were taken, and John had to hold onto Sherlock's neck, so that he could bring him down the full foot. John kissed Sherlock.

And the noise that Sherlock made was something John never could have imagined. The towering man pulled his head back, his eyes widening to a scary width, then a hand rested on the back of John's shoulders. Sherlock traced the raised skin of that tattoo, causing John to hiss and squirm away.

Everything stopped and yet John was in the most agony and the most pleasure. There was a foot and a half of space between them now, and Sherlock's face was blank, his eyes clouded with the cognitive pattern his brain defaulted to when overwhelmed. He twitched his head down for a moment, shivering softly before looking back at John.

Explain.

John shook his head, and raised a hand high, turning it to the left. Sherlock took half of a step, and left his angular cheek in that warm hand.

"Everything about you is frustrating. You are so irritating and I cannot stand it. I can't live with you. I tried to move out, but Mrs. Hudson said I could stay here for free. She said no one else would ever want to live at 221B Baker Street. You were dead, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock shivered.

"You were dead, Sherlock, and I hate you. You are so annoying and I just want to kill you eighty seven percent of the time. You're not even human. You are crazy. And I can't stand you. And I sodding missed you. I can't stand not having you here. I like finding dead things in our fridge and freaking out over it and I just can't live a normal life without you. Using my own computer feels odd, and using my phone feels odd, and when I left the apartment, I knew that you wouldn't be sitting on that couch talking to me while I wasn't there. There is nothing here but that damn smilie reminding me of our cases and I can't do it."

Sherlock literally nuzzled John's hand, and John nearly fainted.

"To finish my thought and answer your question, I know that you are getting bored. I know that there is nothing to anything I have said that addresses 'explain'. You want me to explain that kiss, and I want to slap you hard enough to leave a mark, because then you would have a mark on your face that reminded you of all of the pain you have caused me. I kissed you because it confuses you and now you know what one moment out of one hour out of one of the last two hundred and twenty one days felt like for me…"

Sherlock nodded, his eyes desperately searching his best friend's face before his eyes shut for a second. He clearly wanted to say something snarky, but John had just done something to him that no one else has ever done; he had thrown his thoughts and his love and his pain out there in the air of 221B and Sherlock couldn't just respond in his usual way. There was so much sadness and tension in the air. There was nothing to be happy about here. Even his return didn't make John happy. His back hurt and his heart hurt and everything hurt.

That was it, wasn't it? Sherlock's mind started racing. John wanted him but he didn't want him back after the Fall. It was so hard for John to look at him now, almost two thirds of a year had passed.

"But John. I'm here. Just like you asked."

John actually laughed. The air stood still for a moment.

And then they were hugging so desperately, Sherlock was afraid that John would disassemble within his embrace. John was clung to him as if he would disappear- which made Sherlock suddenly have pains in his chest, and his mind actually experienced pain. Which wasn't possible. Why was this happening?

There was water on his chest. No. Tears. John was crying. Sherlock tried something new with that he had seen at funerals and the like. He moved his fingers up and down John's back, stroking his spine.

The corresponding noise was curious, a sigh and a sob and a groan of both pain and pleasure all combined. Sherlock nodded, finally moving the hand not on his back to tilt John's face up.

Before him was a broken man, so completely and totally empty that there was nothing he could do to help him. Except one thing.

Sherlock leaned down, and slowly began to kiss any moisture off of John's unshowered skin. Salty. Sad. His John. John seemed to step back into reality, before sighing and shivering and moving a hand to touch Sherlock's face. It was clear how quickly Sherlock's presence exhausted him, and the dots were connected before he felt John go limp in his arms. John hadn't slept more than a few hundred hours since Sherlock had Fallen.

Now John had literally fallen into his arms, collapsed from what Sherlock deduced was both shock and exhaustion. So Sherlock squatted, scooping unconscious John into his arms and holding his body close to his. It was not odd for Sherlock. He could feel John's heartbeat slow against his, and it made him relax. This was odd. He hated human contact.

John had always been an exception, though. Sherlock wasn't the slightest bit surprised at his level of comfortable around this man. A few more steps, and the tall man carrying the hobbit of a man stepped into the bedroom, the ruffled sheets making his nose wrinkle. This bed had clearly not been made for months and then Sherlock realized that making it would have made the room look like the original inhabitant was still alive. Which was not necessarily true.

Onto the bed Sherlock placed John, noting the familiar writing on John's back. That was his own handwriting, a note he had written John more than two years ago. Sherlock preferred to text, but his phone had been destroyed in an experiment earlier that day so he had left John a note. The skin around the ink was inflamed, a furious red pink color. The rest of John's shoulder blades were that color too. In fact, there was an odd sort of striping throughout the rash, which made Sherlock tilt his head. Interesting.

Mycroft used to tuck him into their shared bed when they lived in the tiny flat outside of London with their parents. Sherlock thought for a moment, and then lay down next to John, effectively tucking them both in and realizing how happy he felt. John wasn't even conscious, but his soft breaths were falling upon his collarbones, and Sherlock was happy. Being back in 221B was what made Sherlock happy, and being with John was what made that happiness feel real.

No one saw Dr. John Watson for weeks, and so Mrs. Hudson became very angry. That man was living there for free, without a care in the world, and even though she wasn't , Mrs. Hudson had become the housekeeper. She could now smell the stench of John's terrible grief and uncleanliness in her own room, two floors beneath that of 221B Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson rarely showed true anger, preferring to solve her problems with a few kind words and perhaps a small joking jab at the other person. But enough was enough.

The old woman ran upstairs, and opened the never-locked door. She could see her breath, it was so cold. The window was open, which further fueled her anger. The heater was on, spending Mrs. Hudson's hard earned money to warm the air coming in from the outside! Mrs. Hudson started shouting, walking through the apartment, opening doors and looking into rooms. He had to be in here.

"Dr. John Watson, I am going to kill you for what you have done to this flat! I am not your housekeeper, and I have paid good money in order to keep it warm for you! You will catch your death of cold if you don't stop this nonsense! I know you are sad but—"

She gasped. The last door she had opened had been Sherlock's bedroom, which she thought had been untouched for more than half of a year. John's body was stiff, and his back was an unnatural color, an odd scribbling of sorts in the center of the bullseye-like rash that overtook his skin. It was the two hundred and twenty second day since Sherlock had Fallen.

Mrs. Hudson was devastated. The police came; the paramedics came, and declared him well and truly dead. Molly screamed when they rolled him into the morgue, and thus opted not to perform his autopsy. Someone else did. The dirty tattoo needle had caused a bloodborne bacteria to enter his body, spreading throughout him within twenty four hours and taking root in the base of his spinal cord. He had died nineteen days before today.

The tattoo that ended him read, _don't touch the amputated hand in the fridge. It's for an experiment. We need milk. –SH_

And so, as Sherlock had Fallen, as did John.


End file.
